USAF never had a requirement for the J. It was shoved down their throat by congress a few years back. Nice airplane, just that USAF doesn’t have a need for it. All it does is suck up money that could be used for other programs that were planned. The weather J’s were a real joke. They were in place without the proper avionics kit and a big unknown, if the fancy composite props would break up if you drove it through large hail. What a joke.

A J btw has to come here to to the Robins AFB depot to have further work and mods on it that aren’t done when it rolls off of the production line. More waste:The C-130 SPO here has to waste manpower and resources managing things. It isn’t a C-130. It only looks like one.

This project takes money away from things like the common cockpit upgrade ( done by Boeing ) for the rest of the C-130 fleet. It also takes money away from more important things: like getting the new modern avionics, and engines for C-5 in a timely manner, instead of 2007 or 8. Spineless weenies in USAF are just going along as if it was a program that had been planned… which it wasn’t.

Thanks congress. 😡

The Lancer ( except for the ones that crashed ) is pretty much on plan. It was never intended to be a long term fix. Granted some of the pilots didn’t like just giving up the MiG-29s, but there was ” x ” amount of dollars and that was it. The Lancer is far from perfect but IMO a pretty smart move. When the Lancer upgrade was planned, they knew that there would be a decision for a more modern fighter later on. Really considering a lot of other screwy fighter purchases, maybe we should get Romanians to start doing long term planning for our fighter roadmap. 😉

Also we need pph ( pounds per hour consumption ) of each engine at x height and t throttle setting. As mentioned already: It has less drag. Much less then a conventional design jet. I am talking about taking a war load to the enemy. Something conventional designs have a problem with once you start adding drop tanks, weapons and other junk, and keeping good fuel economy. We are talking about a low drag, CLEAN config jet. The air frame is at it’s best at around Mach 1.5 . If it is efficient, that should also mean less air frame stress over time up in the high, thin air. Do you have some kind of a source that says it can only supercruise for half an hour and burn up all that gas? I find that interesting because fuel consumption is low ( it is not using burner ) I would be real interested in seeing some kind of figure like that. It is all about pph. If the jet uses the same pph going mach 1.4-1.5 that a conventional jet does with draggy stores hanging from it going sub-mach. I mean, that is a glaring difference right there in effective range.

Again once we establish some base range figures…. again guess what? When it is determined that it has good range, that is all nice etc etc. But at the end of the day it is still going to have tanker support. Take off – outbound – hit a tanker – fence in – target -fence out- tanker and head home. Part of that is that it is a high value asset. It isn’t going to be based within range of a lot of potential threats if that can be avoided.

http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/2000/articles/oct_00/f-22/f22_1.html

Kind of a hard thing to judge. We have gobs of tankers,

I would think one of the posts here is close though. ( take your pick ). The sustained supercruise thing should be based on airframe/engine inlet issues ( what ever those are ) The engine doesn’t care because inlet devices are going to slow down the air from super sonic to sub sonic. A lot of what we are guessing on is public consumption info. Either it is worse than published or better.

I would say for a strike mission ( kick down the door ) with JDAM or SDB(standoff) vs. a fixed known target and…. IF it was someplace like the Sea of Japan where you don’t care about breaking windows ( in a North Korea scenario ) vs. Italy ( in an Allied Force 1999 scenerio … where there are more windows to break fence out )… it just all depends. Figures usually show the best light. It all depends how much you want to wear out the air frame. You could hit something 800 miles away ( with some reserve left ) mission going supercruise out to the target… ? Mach 1.5 – 1.6 using 94-95% ( no afterburner ) 420-430kt+/- CAS at 48-50000ft = 840-860 +/- TAS/ground speed. ( those are very loose numbers people no calculator, I am sure it isnt perfect) Anyway that assumes you could get to height and go into supercruise continuous which is unrealistic. Fuel burn pph is also based on drag. It is a clean config so I will press toward the good side. 4500pph per engine with a big margin of error on that. Anyway it is something that should be considered. Again the biggest thing will be airframe life. If by some magic it can supercruise and not eatup airframe life at an alarming rate then it will be even more dangerous. At anyrate, even if it has to go at submach out to the war area it will do it with less fuel than most because it is clean config. That is important when you consider most conventional designs can’t cruise up to the very edge, just under mach 1 and not eat gas because of all the drag of external weapons, tanks, pods. I would say F-22 can cruise up to just under sub-mach 1, not eatup a lot of airframe life and not eat up a lot of gas.

If I wanted to get a lot of sorties out of it per day I would say with one tanking ( low use of tanker resources ), using it for kick down first_night_of_the_war strikes, it could put in a lot of sorties per day against a target 1000 miles away. Risnse and repeat.

Be even better if they could do another version of the jet that is P-Suit friendly and higher altitude friendly. Your fuel economy/supercruise/range at 75,000ft would be even better.

The US has control over JDAM like weapons in the way, that US controls the GPS system which is used to guide the weapons. Turn off the GPS, the weapons are unguided.

No. The weapon is an INS weapon with GPS assist. Turn off the GPS and for short bomb flight it will in many situations get to the target depending on fly time. Example: Fly time from 35000 ft could be 55 seconds +/- depending on a lot of situations. Getting an update from that height could be helpful. If you are doing targets where radar assist is possible, something like a new Greek or Israeli F-16 could provide a “refined” lat long INS update which would in many situations be “good enough” without the GPS assist assuming the bomb flight is short.

The Paveway 4 is certainly a way to go. LGB kits are traditionally more expensive than the JDAM kit, and LGB kits have to be inspected more when in storage. Adding the dual use ability should make them cost more. We will see when the PAVEWAY IV does full production. Remember, the reason for PAVEWAY IV was that UK dumb iron wouldn’t fit the JDAM kit. Dual use is nice though. I could see dual use kits replacing JDAM in the US if the unit cost could be kept down.

I like the French AASM.( just read it was delayed a year in R&D. Would like to see another source on that ). Has a lot of ideas that were tested in JDAM testing but not funded when it went in to production. AASM starts out for a MK82 similar style of dumb iron. AASM as the M implies is modular:

-With or with out a rocket on the back
-Digital IR target recognition seeker like the Israeli “SPICE” (or the new Navy only JDAM order, or JASSM, or SLAM-ER etc ) OR a GPS-INS pack like JDAM, your pick.

I’m certainly not going to try and defend the USAF and their performance at Gwalior during “Cope India” back in February. However, this figure being bandied around that the F-15Cs lost in 90% of the dogfights seemed improbable.

Has anybody that’s followed this episode actually got the original quotation or source of where this figure came from?

I’ve so far traced it back as far as this:

Cunningham should certainly know his stuff, as he is a Vietnam War USN F-4 Phantom fighter ace.

However, what I can’t rectify is any directly attributable quote supposedly made by him. Even stranger is that, according to the schedule on-line, there were no Defense Subcommittee hearings on Feb 26th (bear in mind also that this was a day before “Cope India” ended).

So am I just a born cynic…or is all not as it would seem regarding this often-repeated claim?

Best regards

Steve Rush ~ Touchdown-News

The Duke also shot off his mouth for a long time on how valuable the Super Hornet was. Take it with a grain of salt concerning an exercise with an ROE of very thin public consumption information.

If the F-15 had trouble, the Super Hornet would get routed.

Its a guess and thats all it is…. is that there is a whole bunch of procedure with the weapons ( even inert ones ) on the jet. Even though it is in bays, you still have to have someone pull the red flags off of the weapons before it rolls out onto the runway and takes off. Not knowing the exact procedure, but it makes sense. Same when it returns. The safety flags are put back on the weapons.

Why it has the bays open without weps again I am sure there is a good reason. The drive system not being powered up or what ever.

The concept behind the FB-22 is a good one. While it can’t carry as much as…. lets say, a B-1. It is more survivable than a B-1 ( or B-52 ) in a stiff air defense. Has very close to the same range as the B-1 ( B-1 was never a range king ) And if you can locate the jet within 1000 miles of the target areas, so much the better because you can supercruise there and back and put out a lot of sorties per day. Overall not bad. When it comes on line, retire the F-15E, F-117, B-1. Take the money from cancelling JSF and farm it into FB-22 and UCAV.